Padres Editorial: San Diego Padres Biggest Rivals

Jun 27, 2014; San Diego, CA, USA; San Diego Padres mascot The Swingin

Who is Thy Enemy?

If there is one thing baseball fans love, it is good old fashioned rivalries. With all due respect to the Steelers-Ravens or even the Lakers-Celtics, baseball clearly has the best rivalries in sports. Red Sox and Yankees stands alone, with the Dodgers-Giants right behind it. It is a combination of teams that have been around for a long time, can cross geographical lines and games that just always seems to be close. Remember when HOF-elect Pedro Martinez slammed 90-year-old Don Zimmer into the ground? Tim McCarver was ready to storm the field himself to stop the melee. Yet for every great rivalry that now can get played out every year thanks to inter-league play, some teams get the short end of the stick.

After all, every team does have rivalries. Those rivalries are often caused by individual players but amazingly sometimes the rivalries can remain long after the players involved move on. It is amazing that as long as baseball has been played certain tendencies can remain and be challenged. Recently the Red Sox have actually won more World Championships than the Yankees, but for 86 years before that things weren’t so good on the Red Sox side of the court. Bucky “F-ing” Dent. Grady Little leaving Pedro in and Aaron Boone in 2003 come to mind for suffering Sox fans.

The Padres play a fierce AL Rivalry series against the Seattle Mariners every year that really gets the fans going…not so much. Dubbed the Eddie Vedder cup, we’ll dub that the Padres 4th biggest rivalry. Who are the top three though and what moments (recent and historical) cause them to reach that level? After all, the Padres do have rivals but sometimes rivalries are a little more one sided than others. In other words, many teams feel like they have a rivalry against the Dodgers – but the Dodgers may not even know about it.

Will Leitch of SportsonEarth wrote up three rivals for each team, and I’ll take his feedback into account when coming up with the Padres top four rivalries.

Will Deno incite a physical rivalry against his former club? Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

#4 Seattle Mariners

Those hated Seattle Mariners, right? In researching this article I found several articles explaining the origin of this fabricated “rivalry”, one from Friars On Base from 2012 here and one from GasLamp Ball extolling the Vedder Cup name. Based of course on the fact that iconic Pearl Jam lead signer Eddie Vedder went to high school in San Diego before moving and becoming famous in Seattle. He does have a restaurant in San Diego as well and famously would pop in to play surprise shows at The Casbah. This is one of those rivalries that gets created due to scheduling restrictions. Thanks Bud Selig.

You want Inter-League play so you need an AL rival for the Padres to play. Let’s see, the Angels makes sense to play the Dodgers. Cross that out. The A’s should play the Giants to replay the 1989 Earthquake Series every year, cross that one out. Oh, the Mariners! That works out perfectly! Two historically mediocre teams with a few famous players in Ken Griffey Jr and Tony Gwynn and they are both in the same time zone. Let’s get THAT done.

Interestingly enough, since 1995, the Mariners lead the head-to-head series 49-45, so it is actually pretty close. Neither team has ever won a World Series so there is that historical intrigue as well. Whether Seth Smith and Chris Denorfia plan on hitting 30 homers this year to incite the Padres ownership to regret their trades is yet to be seen. Both cities also have departed former basketball franchises, but that leads to more empathy than hatred so just disregard you heard that fact.

In conclusion, if we need an AL rival – Seattle is it!

Mandatory Credit: rockieszingers.com

#2 Colorado Rockies

This one boils down to a dramatic one game playoff game for the 2007 National League West and one Matt Holliday of the Colorado Rockies. The Padres and Rockies had battled all season long but quite frankly the Padres looked to be in a great spot to 3-peat as National League West Champions.

The Rockies caught fire in a crazy way come September though, and just could not lose. After winning the one game playoff, technically game 163 of the regular season, they had won 14 of their last 15 games and would stay that hot all the way to the World Series before deflating and losing to the Boston Red Sox who would win their 2nd World Series in 4 years after not winning one since 1918. The play at the clip below was just the beginning of the heartbreak here though for the Padres, as it stands as the closest the Padres have been to the post-season.

A few days before this game, Trevor Hoffman had blown a chance to clinch the division when Tony Gwynn Jr (of all people!) tripled to help the Brewers beat the Padres in extra innings. Now, in this final game of the season, the teams were tied at 6-6 through 9 innings. How did we get there? Let’s take a look below.

The Rockies went up 3-0 early until Adrian Gonzalez belted his first career grand slam in the 5th after pitcher Jake Peavy got things started with a base hit. The Padres were up 5-3 at this point but the Rockies battled back to tie the game. In the top of the 13th Scott Hairston Jr. hit a two-run homer to give the Padres a two run lead with future Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman still in the bullpen. Padres fans waited with baited breath awaiting what seemed like the inevitable but also knowing that Hoffman had struggled this season. He had already blown six saves that season but was Trevor Hoffman. This of course though was also Coors Field, where no lead is ever safe.

So to the bottom half they went, with Hoffman coming in. He immediately allowed back-to-back doubles to start things off before a game-tying triple to Holliday. Not a good start. After an intentional walk to hot-hitting Todd Helton, up came light-hitting Jamey Carroll. He hit the sac fly to right and Brian Giles made a lollipop but on-target throw to catcher Michael Barrett. Despite the delayed call, he was called safe and the Rockies won the game.

Replays to all Padres fans sure make it look like he was out and blocked, but this was before instant replay and we will never know. In all reality though, clearly Hoffman was throwing softballs to home plate at this point and whose to say the next hitter wouldn’t have singled in Helton? Either way, a rivalry was born that night. The Padres currently are down in the all-time series 171-188.

Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

# 1 Los Angeles Dodgers

If you want to see bad fans on display, go to a Padres-Dodgers game at Petco Park. Opening Day 2013 I sat right next to a fan fight between a Dodgers and Padres fan, and this is pretty common. The problem with this rivalry is that the Dodgers will claim it doesn’t matter to them. They have the Giants rivalry, a Diamondbacks rivalry where they have actually exchanged punches, and a St. Louis Cardinals team that has eliminated them two years in a row from the playoffs despite one year where they actually shook hands after losing to the Cardinals. Of course that was led by a Canadian.

The Dodgers-Padres rivalry you can look at from a lot of angles. The Clippers left San Diego for LA, but until recently no one cared at all about the Clippers. San Diego fights an inferiority complex to Los Angeles despite being cleaner, sunnier, not as crowded, and just generally better than LA. Pretty much everything but The Price Is Right AND craft beer. Yet these games just always seem to be close. A few quick examples:

1) Comeback Win for the Padres: Last June, the Padres rallied for three in the 9th to beat the Dodgers 4-3. This one was huge because it was the week that San Diego lost Tony Gwynn and was playing with emotion. As Everth Cabrera stated, ”When I hit the fly ball I celebrate like it was a walk-off bomb,” Cabrera said. ”Especially against the Dodgers with all their fans from L.A. here.”.

2) Comeback Win for the Dodgers: Back in 2006, the Dodgers hit 4 home runs in a row in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game, then won in the 10th on a Nomar Garciaparra walk-off. That’s right, just like the Rockies game, the Padres regained the lead in the top half of the 10th before losing it all over again in the bottom half. Said Brian Giles “You expect anything different the way this division has gone the last couple of years. There are a lot of ups and downs in this game. This is going to go down to the wire” Well said Brian.

3) The Fight. This one is pretty obvious, and it sure would be interesting to see the first reactions between Matt Kemp and Carlos Quentin in Spring Training assuming Quentin is still there. What people might forget is that after the initial brawl there was a secondary brawl which involved Jerry Hairston Jr and Matt Kemp waiting outside the Padres clubhouse for Quentin until Padres pitcher Clayton Richard intervened to stop a third fight.

Dodgers manager Don Mattingly stated at the time,”In a 2-1 game we’re trying to hit him 3-2? It’s just stupid is what it is. He should not play a game until Greinke can pitch. If he plays before Greinke pitches, something is wrong.”

Not to mention longtime Dodger-turned Padre Steve Garvey is immortalized in Padres lore for sending the Padres to their first World Series, thought its debatable who wins that part of the rivalry. Perhaps he will be the key to restoring civility between the two franchises. He and Matt Kemp.

Rivalries are a fun part of the game and fans enjoy following them. By the way the Padres are 369-412 against the Dodgers all time. Time to make up some ground in 2015.

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